Event Detail

The empirical focus of my presentation is how Italian and English
factives differ in the way they relate to Negative Polarity Items
(NPIs). Certain emotive factives are known to license NPIs in English
(cf. a); their Italian counterparts, however, do not (cf. b).

In ( c) we see that negation can license an NPI across a factive
(realize) in English; but in Italian this seems to be systematically
impossible. Why do Italian vs. English factives differ in just these
ways, while being otherwise quite similar (in e.g., their lexical
meaning, their behavior with respect to extraction, etc.)? What is the
parameter involved?

In addressing these questions I will build on the idea that a host of
grammatical phenomena (polarity being a prime case) are rooted in our
‘spontaneous logicality’. I will articulate and defend the (prima facie
quite implausible) claim that some constructions perceived as
‘ungrammatical’ owe their status to the fact that they are logical
contradictions.